


After Glow

by littlelostsputnik



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Implied Relationship, M/M, Radium Girls, altered history, radiation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-15
Updated: 2014-12-15
Packaged: 2018-03-01 07:01:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2764004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlelostsputnik/pseuds/littlelostsputnik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Despite being well read, his mother rarely brought the paper home. Nearly seventy years later, Steve Rogers discovers why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After Glow

Despite being well read, his mother rarely brought the paper home. Steve was aware she read it, often bringing back the front headlines as conversation topics over dinner. It was where the sickly blond child learned about the horrors of bubonic plague, the right to vote for women, Mickey Mouse, and Penicillin. But never did their house contain the rustle of paper or the shock of a sensationalized headline.

Sarah had instilled in her son the desire to seek out knowledge and the avenues to obtain it. Even if it meant glancing quickly as he hurried on by the local paperboy or lingering too long at the magazine stand but by then, little did he know, his mother’s worries were history.

It was his eighteenth birthday and Bucky would be ‘round after his shift at the docks when Steve would get his first clue – he didn’t know it, not until nearly ninety years later – but the event had been significant for other reason. “Steve, when your father was killed his possessions were returned.” A pause, slender fingertips tracing the worn letter within well-worked hands as a small smile tilted the corner of her lips. “Along with the items was a letter of instructions.”

Steve had never seen his mother fumble. She was grace and elegance in the slums of Brooklyn but as hands reached for the tin on the counter Steven noted the tremble in reverence of the event. The clack of the metal opening disturbed the quiet room and hung between mother and son before words floated past partially deaf ears. “He wanted you to have it on your 18th birthday; today.”

The item was passed between the figures, artist hands tracing over the squared off edges, yellowed face, and hands that would glow in the darkest of nights. “His watch…” Not a question but more of a whispered awe as the inspection included the feel of worn leather, the carved initials S.R/J.R, and the slight scratch as long dormant gears turned – restarting the tick-tick-tick of suspended life.

“Thank you mom. I…it really means a lot.”

An embrace, one of many on his birthday along with a laughed out _Happy Birthday_ before Sarah turned her attention to the loud patterned knock at the door. “I believe Bucky is here to whisk you off on another double date?” This earned a loud groan from the scrawny youth as pale eyes rolled dramatically as the watch was fastened to his wrist and heavy door pulled open.

“No dates tonight, Mrs. Rogers. Tonight is strictly for Steve’s enjoyment and the Brooklyn Museum has a showing of Aaron Douglas’s work that Steve has been talking non-stop about.” The grin issued by his friend earned a sheepish smile from the newly coined adult.

“Well, be safe you two. I will be at work so Ms. Newark is home if you need anything.”

Steve Rogers’ 18th birthday. Complete with art from one of the most prolific artist of the Harlem Renaissance, drinks at the local bar, and stolen kisses in the alley with a boy in uniform interrupted by the clearing of a familiar throat and the glare of a brunette who would later share more than drunken kisses.

All in all it had been a birthday to remember.

But years passed including a funeral he would remember, a war that rolled in on the dark clouds of ash and oppression, and a kind German man who gave him a chance.

At night, while the girls went out dancing till late, Steve would watch the second hand of the gifted watch glow in the darkness. When the girls faded away and were replaced by cracks of distant gunfire and the gentle snores of quickly aged men it was the green shine of the hour hand that slowly passed the time.

And as goodbyes were said over radio hidden in promises of dances and waves of bone-numbing water crashed over the plane and its stolen cargo, it was the familiar faint gleam that would remain the last thing pale blue eyes saw for another seventy years.

Seventy years in the future and his fathers watch is rarely worn but reverently displayed on the loaned dresser of billionaire playboy, Tony Stark while Steve settles for something more modern and less abused by the cruel hands of time. A reminder of a life long settled to waste away in the history books of the future.

The majority of those same books physically lining the walls of Stark Tower’s library while the remainder could be found stored digitally in the expanses of the Internet. And when saving-the-world business was slow, Steve could tote his laptop to the secluded room, connect to the high-speed Wi-Fi, and catch up on his list of things he had missed while doing his time under the ocean.

Einstein. Brooklyn’s World Series win, Sputnik, Malcolm X, and Sally Ride.

The man from the past drank the information in like a man lost in the desert. Shoulders hunched over the illuminated keyboard, highlighter skimming through text, and pen jotted information in narrow margins.

But there were times when intake became too much and Captain America made the switch to a period of time he remembered vividly – setting his search options for events in the 1920s – 1940s and allowing sharp eyes to scan over the familiar headlines of his youth.  The action was relaxing, settling into the areas of his brain associated with the too small apartments – first with his mother and than with Bucky. The double dates arranged by his best friend and roommate, the art he did for the local mom-n-pop stores to advertise fresh ingredients.

If he allowed eyelids to fall shut he could even taste the old Brooklyn air, feel the warmth of Bucky pressed tightly against his side, hear the quiet, pleasured gasps exchanged between the Jewish longshoreman and a Irish-Catholic art student.

_Leopold and Loed Murder a Neighbor Out of Boredom._

_Balto, the Sled Dog, Brings Serum to Nome Alaska._

_St. Valentine’s Day Massacre._

**_Radium Death on Rampage._ **

It was a headline he had yet to see, omitted from any nightly conversations between mother and son. As the cursor hovered over the unopened link there was a small nagging part of his brain that told him to leave the past in the past. Wasn’t his focus supposed to be on what had happened after becoming a _capsical._

“Curiosity killed the cat…” Voice, with hinted Brooklyn accent, broke the comfortable silence. _And_ _satisfaction brought him back._

 ** _Doomed to Tortured, Horrible Death! –_ ** _Marked for death from “radium poisoning” contracted while at Radium Dial Co. of Ottawa., Mrs. Charlotte Purcell, 31, 6749 S. Halsted St. lives in daily fear of end that is inevitable. …Last chance of collecting damages along with 14 other doomed women workers – at hearing before Illinois industrial…July 23 at Ottawa – may bring only $667._

 

Scanned letters jumped out at him from the archived news article, fingers curling around the edge of the gifted laptop as a shaky breath – one so similar to those that had been a precursor to an asthma attack – rattled through is lungs.

Such an event was something he would have never expected his mother to leave out of the nightly discussions. Following links further down the rabbit-hole, Steve learned that the dangerous working conditions for the women and the ruling by the courts had been one of the catalysts to worker safety. From miners to scientists working on the atomic bomb – the women of the Radium Dial Co., Waterbury Clock Co., and countless other watch companies had paved the way to more stringent safety laws with rotted jaws and painful deaths.

Looking back, Steve could remember faint whispers overheard in passing as he moved through the crowded streets but never had paid any attention. If it were important, his mother would have told him…right?

It was a mystery from his time period; a bit of history that he had lived yet never knew. Suddenly his focus had changed, the things he had missed could wait because they would not be going away. But this, the story of the ‘Radium Girls’ was something he could relate to.

Hours passed, the minute and hour hand ticking along in the oversized clock as Captain America went article after article reading on the woman made famous through time. In the past they were shamed and accused of syphilis, now, almost 100 years in the future poetry, art, and even exhibits were being made in their honor.

But the confusion had not passed, the nagging need to know why his mother had kept the information from him. Bucky would know, Bucky had been even more obsessed with current events as a child than Steve – but James Buchanan Barnes was a ghost, lost among busy streets and falsified documents that had pushed the Avengers to a standstill after a year of searching.

A moment of silence as the tapping of computer ceased and the blond was reminded of what he should be doing. _Steve, give it a rest. Take the night off and do something not related to Bucky – just this once._ A plea from the archer who had become a close friend, one he couldn’t deny as a lack of sleep, a growing concern, and a loneliness one feels when they are out of their time caused his temper to be shorter and handsome features to be permanently turned to a scowl.  

Now was not the time to dwell on his lost friend, instead turning his attention to the finally loaded picture projected on his screen. It was nothing special, something found in an article talking about the latest opening of a museum exhibit ten years ago focusing on the women hired to paint luminous lines and numbers on fashionable watches but attention as drawn to the young woman in the front row, the slightest hint of a baby-bump nearly hidden by a loose shirt, and the familiar blond hair tucked neatly up into the stylish bun.

A light dusting of freckles, the nose he had inherited from her, the slender fingers that Steve remembers slathering his chest with salve when coughs kept him awake – even after all these years the veteran still remembered the little details that told him the woman pictured was his mother. “ _The women of_ _Radium Luminous Material Corporation celebrate Easter by painting eggs with radium paint used for glow-face watches.”_

Steve’s world screeched to a halt, here, in worn black and white was an image of his mother in a time and place he never knew. At this time his father would have been alive, a few months shy of his death. Sarah would have been in nursing school, just starting, and Steve…well Steve would be that little bump his mother was doing her best to conceal.

Anemia, leukemia, defects in unborn children. The list was expansive but it was those three that stuck out like a sore thumb and brought unshed tears to pale eyes. Had his mother’s death been preventable? Had the constant teasing, expensive doctor’s appointments, and weakened immune system of his youth been a by-product of lax worker safety laws?

The information was too much and the young man found himself slamming the laptop shut, fingers curling into the arm of his chair as a deep breath was taken and eyes closed against the dark sky of a day passed in silence and quiet horror. Strong arms pushed the exhausted body out of the wingback chair, while slippered feet carried the American Hero out of the library, into the elevator, and finally to the solid door of the assigned room. There was little Steve could do now, his mother was dead and the serum had taken care of any worries he might have had but there was no stopping the twinge of pain when eyes fell on the still glowing, yet dim, numbers that had once been painstakingly brushed by lips that had kissed his forehead. The same lips that had twirled a small bristles into a sharpened point before dipping it in the paint that tasted slightly of glue and had a gritty taste that few objected to.

A watch made by his mother, worn by his father, and gifted to an 18-year old boy who would never know how a single, ticking gear could shape his entire existence until nearly 100 years later.  

**Author's Note:**

>   
>  _"The hands on the clock are waving goodbye. It was my grandfather’s watch. The dial was painted by hand in America during World War I. The brides of soldiers seated at long tables dutifully making luminous little sixes and eights to help keep the world free. The eights were particularly hard to make; so the women sucked on the tips of the paintbrushes to bring them to a fine point. One by one, their mouths began to fill with cancer. The radium-based paint they had swallowed bombarded their brains and bones with alpha and beta particles. The women who painted the watch faces sued the US Radium Corporation of West Orange, New Jersey. Had the trial been at night, the breath they used to say goodbye to the world would have glowed like moonlit fog. They were given ten thousand dollars for their lives." - The Half Life of Timofey Berezin (PU-239)_   
> 
> 
> Tumblr: [alittlelostsputnik@tumblr](http://alittlelostsputnik.tumblr.com/)


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